Day 3 - Wheatley and Jacobs...Two Women's Views of Slavery

Phillis Wheatley's poetry and Harriet Jacobs' "fictionalized" documentary each present quite different, yet somehow unifying principles of slavery in America. It is absolutely crucial in analyzing the differences between these two authors to recognize the time-frame within which they wrote. Wheatley lived between ca. 1753 to 1784, dying around the end of the American Revolution, a time when America was still focused on freeing herself from Great Britain and developing her own identity. Jacobs lived between ca. 1813 to 1897 during the time when slavery became a central focus in American society with the Dred Scott Case in St. Louis, the formation of the anti-slavery Republican Party, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and, of course, the Civil War.

In her poem "To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth...," Wheatley rejoices in the appointment of William as the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth and Secretary of State to North America; she feels this will bring Freedom to America. She writes:

"No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredressed complain,
No Longer shalt thou dread the iron chain
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant to enslave the land."

Here's the key: I don't believe Wheatley is writing about African American slavery. She is writing about America's slavery. She is comparing the Freedom which she once had in Africa to the prospect of Freedom for America from the "Tyranny" of British rule. We must keep in mind that Wheatley was raised in a fairly nurturing environment, and was given the gift of an education including English, Theology and Latin. She was in no way a "slave" as we may conceive of a slave today. Harriet Jacobs, on the other hand, was.

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In her "fictionalized narrative" Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs recounts her own experience as a black female slave through Linda Brent, a character she created to protect her own identity. Jacobs tells us exactly why she is writing her book in Chapter V:

"Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage, suffering as I once suffered."

She tells of how as a child, "a man forty years [her] senior daily [violated] the most sacred commandments of nature," and of Mrs. Flint, the jealous mistress who was more preoccupied of her husband's lust towards his slaves than of "the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was placed." In the end, Jacobs tells graphically of her escape from the South, including details of her self-imprisonment on the plantation to avoid her Master.

All in all, both Wheatley and Jacobs describe the tyranny of slavery very effectively; Wheatley describes the slavery of her country, and Jacobs describes her own slavery through
Linda Brent. They also both implicitly convey the message that the dominance the white man exerts on society must be stood up against when he jeopardizes its moral fabric.